"Sai Baba’s state of Andhra Pradesh has long been one of India’s
poorest. He has not managed to “clean up his own backyard” as he
has so long promised to do. But then he was referring to the
whole of India as his backyard, and he has not cleaned that up,
either".

"Would many Indian politicians, notorious for their extreme
corruption, dare expose the foreign goose that lays the (cosmic!)
golden egg? Driving this question would have reinforced the
producer Eamon Hardy’s original query about
whether India is a mature democracy".

In the BBC’s 2004 television documentary The
Secret Swami, confronted by the BBC interviewer Tanya
Datta,
Murali Manohar Joshi (see photo, right), one of
the most powerful ministers in the since-defeated A.B.
Vajpayee (pictured to left) right-wing government, soon
lost his temper, jabbing away with pointed finger at Ms Datta,

accusing the BBC and people in England of plotting against
Sai Baba, A.B. Vajpayee and P.N. Bhagawati (a
key Sathya Sai Central Trust member and former Chief Justice of
India). He arrogantly shouts at her,“No, no, no… You don’t know the meaning of
interviewing a minister in my capacity, as a minister of my
stature.”

Goldstein, of Covina, California, as world convener of the
Sathya Sai Organisation, and still more recently retired from
his chairmanship of the Indian organization, too. The same
Shah furnished a prime example of how to successfully prevent
police, media and judicial investigation in India.
The Hindu, 10-6-1993 reported:

“When press persons met Mr. Indulal Shah, chief
functionary of the Sri Sathya Sai World Trust, he said, ‘the
matter is purely internal and we do not wish to have any law
enforcement agency investigating into it.’”

Sai Baba, then, is a feudal Lord with a vice-like grip not
only Puttaparthi - site of the most frequented ashram in the
world - but far beyond. And above the reach of the laws of
India?"